Math Disabilities: A Selective Meta-Analysis of the Literature

Abstract

This article synthesizes published literature comparing the cognitive functioning of children who have math disabilities (MD) with that of (a) average-achieving children; (b) children who have reading disabilities (RD); and (c) children who have co-morbid disabilities (MD+RD). Average achievers outperformed children with MD on measures of verbal problem solving, naming speed, verbal working memory (WM), visual-spatial WM, and long-term memory (LTM). Children with MD outperformed co-morbid children on measures of literacy, visual-spatial problem solving, LTM, short-term memory (STM) for words, and verbal WM. Children with MD could be differentiated from children with RDonly on naming speed and visual-spatial WM. Differences in cognitive functioning between children with MD and average achievers were related primarily to verbal WM when the effects of all other variables (e.g., age, IQ, and other domain categories) were partialed out.

Defective number module or impaired access? Numerical magnitude processing in first graders with mathematical difficulties

“…those children whose performance was below the 25 th percentile on this standardized screening measure. The 25 th percentile cut-off has been commonly used to select children with mathematical difficulties (Swanson & Jerman, 2006). This group of children with mathematical difficulties was divided into the LAgroup (math achievement scores between the 16 th and 25 th percentile; n = 21), and the MLDgroup (math achievement scores below the 16 th percentile; n = 20).…”

“…Much of the existing research has identified children as having mathematical difficulties if their performance on a standardized mathematics achievement test is below the 25 th percentile (Swanson & Jerman, 2006). This cut-off score for mathematical difficulties is rather lenient and might result in a sample of children with potentially severe and potentially mild forms of mathematical difficulties, which both may show different cognitive profiles (Geary et al, 2007(Geary et al, , 2008Murphy, Mazzocco, Hanich, & Early, 2007).…”

Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review.

“…Short-term memory was initially seen as a limited capacity memory store that was subject to rapid loss due to decay (Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). A number of studies have shown that measures of short-term memory, such as digit span, correlate modestly with measures of higher level cognitive function, such as IQ (Mukunda & Hall, 1992;Unsworth & Engle, 2007b), reading (Swanson, Zheng, & Jerman, 2009), and arithmetic skills (Swanson & Jerman, 2006). In contrast to shortterm memory tasks such as digit span, working memory tasks involve trying to maintain information in active memory while simultaneously performing distracting or interfering activities (Case, Kurland, & Goldberg, 1982;Daneman & Carpenter, 1980).…”

Relação entre habilidades cognitivas de processamento visual e inteligência fluida com o desempenho em aritmética

“…Estudos apontam uma relação consistente com conhecimento/compreensão (Floyd, Evans, & McGrew, 2003;Gelman & Butterworth, 2005;Swanson & Jerman, 2006), velocidade de processamento (Floyd et al, 2003;McGrew & Wedling, 2010), memória de curto prazo e memória operacional (Fuchs et al, 2008;Geary, 2007;) bem como inteligência fluida (Flanagan et al, 2006;Geray, 2007;Hale et al, 2007) e processamento visual (Geary, 2007;Hale et al, 2008).…”